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Tonight’s Rally in the Valley protest in Chilliwack expected to make Premier Campbell’s day

February 20, 2002

News release

HEU members will be in the crowd at
6:00 p.m. at the Chilliwack Public Library
Fraser Valley front-line health care providers — members of the Hospital Employees’ Union (CUPE) — will join concerned area residents including friends, neighbours, representatives of community groups, teachers, students and seniors for a Rally in the Valley beginning at 6:00 p.m. tonight in downtown Chilliwack, Salish Park and the library. They’ll be gathering to meet Premier Campbell who is scheduled to speak at a dinner in the adjacent hotel.

The rally’s organizing committee anticipates that hundreds of Valley residents will turn out to add their voices to the growing movement of citizens’ protests across B.C. against the Campbell Liberals’ cuts to health, education and other public services, sales tax and user fee increases, and tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations.

“Fraser Valley residents realize the impact that recent government decisions like closing courthouses, raising MSP premiums, cutting the funding for women’s services and allowing post-secondary tuition fees to rise will have on most British Columbians, and they don’t like what they see,” says HEU Chilliwack local chairperson Connie Larabie.

“One of the biggest concerns in this region is the privatization threat including the possibility of a public/private partnership (P3) hospital in Abbotsford,” says Larabie. “We want our MLAs to know that private deals for public services are unacceptable here, whether they are in health care, education, transportation, forests, hydro or any other public service.”

Trained, volunteer event marshals have been recruited to ensure that people’s right to assemble is maintained and that the rally proceeds in an orderly fashion. It has been well publicized that the premier will be accompanied throughout the day by a heightened security force.